Over the course of the last forty years, Canada’s
universities, colleges and K-12 educational systems have performed
extraordinarily well. We now have a more educated populace than at any time in
our history. We have more employment directly linked to the expertise learned
during school. We have more employers expecting workers and employees to be
well trained, with varying degrees of knowledge and applied skills. The
educational system as a whole is more attuned to the ups and downs of the
economy and expectations of politicians and policymakers.

However, we are now entering a period, when policy makers
are linking education exclusively to skills and outcomes. This is a return to
nineteenth century values. It is as if we have forgotten all the transformative
changes of the 20th century, which was arguably the period of
greatest innovation in the history of education.

To learn is in fact to speculate, to develop habits of
inquiry and a thirst for knowledge. Inevitably, as you learn more, the hunger
to apply that learning grows. The etymology of the word learning clearly
describes its scope. “Old English leornian — to get knowledge, be
cultivated, study, read, think about.” When you learn less and that learning is
tied too specifically to outcomes that don’t reflect your own individuality and
your own aspirations, you ironically limit the scope of your expectations.

Let’s call this “narrow learning.” Narrow learning makes it
seem as if the humanities for example, are completely superfluous. Why study
literature when it provides you with no direct skills other than the ability to
read, write, express yourself and think independently? Why study art when
creativity releases inner needs and desires that cannot be quantified and most
certainly cannot be directly related to the immediate future? Narrow learning
suggests that human beings are linear in their expectations about themselves.
It also suggests that there are simple and reductive solutions to the many
different ways in which people acquire knowledge.

“Narrow learning,” creates expectations about knowledge that
streamline the often difficult and sometimes contradictory ways in which people
— learners — engage with information, especially information that is
challenging and new. Complexity is reduced to a series questions and answers,
most often within the context of examinations. Educators and policy makers have
forgotten that exams for instance, only measure limited and profoundly
circumscribed ideas and for the most part tell us very little about the
aspirations, needs, conflicts and challenges that individual learners face.

This may sound “theoretical” but for those of us in the
front lines of the educational system, we are witnessing and sometimes
submitting to the pressures to rush students through their education, to seek
results when none may be available. Learners are so different, so individual
and often so conflicted that it is difficult to assess what they have learned. The
urgency to complete a degree or a course overwhelms the slow pace that is
sometimes necessary if learners are to work into new material, take ideas
seriously and even translate those ideas into some form of action.

Ironically, the humanities are being studied outside of
school in the informal settings made possible by social media. Take a close
look at Pinterest, Twitter and Facebook and you will see people engaging with
their passions and trying to figure out critical approaches to those passions. Spend
some time on Reddit and you will see conversations about every topic,
surrounded by suggestions and solutions to all sorts of challenges and
problems. Reddit is like the Greek agoras of old. It is a public square full of
conversation, with coffee tables spread throughout.

New knowledge cannot be gained through the use of old tools
unless learning itself is reduced and expectations are limited. This then is
the irony of “narrow learning” and it is
that expectations are reduced to narrow models, functional relationships and
mono-disciplinary strategies. The broader question is, why have we not learned this and why are we returning with such force and emphasis to models that have
proven themselves so weak and counterproductive?

To me, the experience of learning is dependent upon the
context in which it takes place. Educational institutions have developed in
tandem with a series of grand expectations about their impact and usefulness.
That history is bound up with the hope that there will be social and economic
benefits from what students learn and what they become. I use the word hope
advisedly because the history of education is littered with the remains of many
failed experiments to fulfil those goals. There have also been many successes.
The last twenty years have been difficult for the educational system.

Expectations have grown and at the same time, institutions
have had great difficulty in keeping pace with demands from all sectors of our
society. This is not due to a lack of effort. Quite the contrary, the story of
education in the 20th century is about educators trying, at every level, to
resolve the issues of learning, empowerment and student development. The
problem is that institutions do not change willingly and when changes occur,
they are often difficult to maintain.

The most important question that needs to be answered about
the future of the educational system is how we are going to encourage the
creation of new paradigms of learning. Learning is largely based on the complex
circumstances and context of classroom and school culture. Learning is also
profoundly affected by the ways in which educational institutions are governed,
as well as the expectations of students. This mix of features is made more
difficult by the challenges that faculty and staff face in keeping the educational
system in good shape. The complexity of all of these elements, their interaction
and the challenge of planning for improvement have become central features of
the debate on the future of education as we know it.

Context is about stories and in most instances, the stories
that surround and underlie learning are rather more ephemeral than we would
want to believe. Many of our theories of learning and so much of the practice
of teaching does not account for the profoundly subjective nature of the school
experience. The desire to convey information and the social and cultural
pressure to make learning into something that can be validated empirically
makes it appear as if subjectivity is a distraction. It is not supposed to
matter if students are experiencing some of the most turbulent periods of their
lives as they move through the educational system. Somehow, they have to suffer
through all of the expectations of the system and of their families, all of the
social pressures and physical and psychological transformations that
transitional periods of life engender and still succeed. Thankfully, many do.
Because of a variety of societal pressures, the complexity of the context that
I have just described is often marginalized in discussions of education.

If you add in the various layers of experience that teachers
go through as they transit from one stage of life to another, then it becomes
clear why there is no simple way of describing how, or even whether, learning
takes place inside educational institutions. This situation has been made even
more difficult by the fact that over the last decade the demands for change in
schools has become very intense. The subjective space of the teacher, for example,
from family problems to illness is more often than not kept in the background
of institutional life. Yet, communication cannot be abstracted from the realities
that people are experiencing and from the pressures that they are under. I am
not suggesting a focus here. Rather, I am discussing a territory that is more
complex than we are often ready to admit.